USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 18
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We must get accurately before the mind's eye the precise propor- tions of this first city of Brooklyn. We have observed that the village took in only a part of the old town of Breuckelen, and left out the historic spot where stood at first the hamlet of that name. The city took in all of the town and no more, incorporating all the neighbor- hoods, Wallabout, Cripplebush, Bedford, Gowanns, Red Hook. Bush- wiek was reserved for a later day, not far distant, and in the meantime was destined to behold some notable municipal developments within its own borders. The other towns were not to be thought of for a half century or more, the last one coming within the corporation just
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sixty years later. The marriage of village and town was a profitable one for the former, according to a statement of quaint interest to those accustomed to the large figures of later days. At the time of the incorporation the village had a debt of about $22,000, occasioned by the building of one or two new markets; there was also a lawsuit under way with a private citizen, which involved the ontlay of $20,- 000. This total of $42,000 was, of course, assumed by the new city, covering the township. The latter, on the other hand, had no debts whatever, and had several choice pieces of property in various parts of
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THE CITY HALL, BROOKLYN.
the interior and along the East River. The city was divided into nine wards; the First included pretty nearly all that had been the village, especially that south and west of the Old Ferry Road or Fulton Street to Red Hook Lane; the Second and Fourth took in the remainder. em- bracing the " Olympia " section, which was not thickly settled yet. The Third contained the hallowed spot of the feeble beginnings of 1646. From the Fifth, taking in the Wallabout, the Eleventh and Twentieth have since been formed; and from the Sixth, stretching beyond Atlantic (then District) Street to Red Hook, the Tenth and Twelfth have been taken. The Seventh embraced the Cripplebush and Bedford sections. The Eighth was about coterminous with the old Gowanns, and the Ninth was an outpost little occupied even to
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this day, through which the Clove Road ran, and resting upon the boundaries of Flatbush. Each of these wards was entitled to two Aldermen. The year 1834 is memorable, as we saw in our previous volume, because then the people of New York were first permitted to elect their own Mayor. It was a privilege extended only to the metropolis of the State. Brooklyn was fain to do what New York had been doing only since 1822. It elected its Aldermen in the different wards, and then these eighteen gentlemen ( for such they were then) elected the Mayor of the city. The man first honored with the mayor- alty of Brooklyn was Mr. George Hall. A year after he was born, in 1796, his father purchased the farm upon which stood the historic Valley Grove House, the precise location of which is indicated by the memorial bronze tablet in the Valley Pass, Prospect Park. As he grew to boyhood he was sent to the Erasmus Hall Academy near by. He was popular in his habits and successful in his trade. In 1833, the last year of Brooklyn's village life, he was chosen President of its Board of Trustees. He was now chosen the first Mayor of the new city, and, as we shall see, when the first consolidation bade Brooklyn leap suddenly to greatness, he was again the Mayor of the enlarged city. Shortly after the act of incorporation had been passed by the Legislature of the State, on April 25, 1834, the auspicious event was duly recognized by a public celebration of it. A procession was or- ganized, marching gayly through the streets, while the consummation was reached at the exercises in the First Presbyterian Church, then in Orange Street on the site of Plymouth Church, where an oration was delivered by William Rockwell.
The dignity of cityhood had hardly been officially attained when the fathers of Brooklyn set about procuring for her a fine structure as a city hall. The City Hall in New York, chaste, noble, fitting in all its appointments, was to be utterly eclipsed by the splendid edifice con- templated by her small sister just born. The location selected for it was a happy one, clear of every other adjoining building, making it the central figure of an immense plaza formed by the widely diverging lines of Fulton, Joralemon, and Court streets, and the then open fields between. The material of which it was to be constructed was marble. It was to have porticoes on three fronts, with columns thirty- six feet high, " ornamented with capitals of the Grecian order from the design of the Tower of the Winds." The base of these porticoes was to be seventeen feet from the level of the street, up to which a generous sweep of marble steps was to lead from three sides at once. The angles of the building were to be surmounted by domes, while from its center was to rise a tower with bell and clock one hundred and twenty-five feet high, " enriched with a cornice and entablature, supported with caryatides standing on pedestals." This was all very superb, but a glance at the structure now will discover the fact that all these details are not there. There are no domes on the four
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corners; the noble central tower (after destruction by fire a few years ago, and an absence until replacement of a year or more) is patent to the eye that seeks the official time. The three (or four) porticoes are represented by only one, fronting the triangular space between Court and Fulton streets, and seems to answer the deserip- tion meant to apply to them all. The reason for the absence of these intended parts is not far to seek. The Brooklyn city fathers were unconsciously preparing a modern illustration of the folly indicated by the failure to " count the cost," in proceeding to build. As Arte- mus Ward said of Napoleon 1., the difficulty with the new corporation was that they were trying to do too much-and did it. In the midst of their building operations came on the great panic of 1837, with the depressions and hard times before it and after it. So the walls had not risen very high when the work had to cease, and even in 1845, there was small prospect of their ever going up any higher. But about that time prosperity had again begun to smile, and prudence had come from the experience of the past, and so the corporation re- solved, in proceeding with the erection of their City Hall, to do so on a modified plan, and upon a scale of magnificence much reduced. Hence, the original walls were demolished, and the present building begun in 1845, and, as a result, we see but the one portico, we miss the four domes on the corners, and also the " caryatides "; yet what remains is sufficiently pleasing to the eye in its greater simplicity. While maintaining a dignity of outline which well suits the purposes of the structure, it has not the advantage of reminding us of the " Colonial style " so appropriate to edifices in America, and which the New York City Hall succeeds in reproducing so beautifully. But it has a distinction all its own, considering the different style of archi- tecture which it affects. It was completed in 1849.
In 1835 the population of Brooklyn had reached 24,310. Five years later it was already 36,233; and, in 1845, it was very nearly sixty thou- sand. This rapid increase was an exceedingly gratifying circum- stance to her denizens of that day. They reflected with immense sat- isfaction that the city embraced within its own bounds nearly half the population of all of Long Island. They boasted that she had " al- ready attained to the proud eminence of the second city of the Empire State." And they soberly asked each other: " When New York be- comes what London is at the present time, is it improbable that Brooklyn will be what New York is now?" This was altogether too modest an estimate or forecast. New York, as now enlarged, may be what London was in 1845; but it takes the addition of Brooklyn to make it so, and before ever New York was London's equal, Brooklyn had far surpassed what New York was in 1845. Her population then was about 450,000, and Brooklyn had passed that mark more than twenty years before the latest consolidation. The historian Thomp- son, before 1840, also indulged himself in a prophetic reverie. But
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even the dreams of men seem to fall short when it comes to the growth and prosperity of the land and her various cities. The commissioners who laid out New York's system of streets up to One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street in 1807, timorously ventured to predict that centu- ries perhaps would be required to fill them up with inhabitants, and decades have been sufficient for the process. So Thompson, before 1840, ventured to predict that " in half a century perhaps a continuous city " would reach all the way " from the month of Newtown Creek to Red Hook, a distance of four miles." In 1890, the City of Brooklyn, having not yet begun to take in New Utrecht and the other outside towns, reached indeed from Newtown Creek southward, but went far beyond Red Hook, having taken in and occupied all of Gowanus, near- ly to Sixtieth Street, adding at least two miles to the estimate, and reaching back to the Queens County line in the interior, through the annexation of New Lots in 1886. Yet it must be recognized that the cause for this rapid growth was to be found in the conditions pre- vailing on the other side of the East River. During the period we are now treating, when the City of Brooklyn embraced merely the ter- ritory of the original township, railroads and telegraphs were rapidly concentrating the business and finance of the Republic at New York. There, too, the great armies of immigrants landed, and their deposits swelled the number of denizens in all its vicinity. Even in 1845, Brooklyn had become what has been so often said, both good humor- edly and ill-naturedly, " New York's bedroom." We find Prime em- phasizing that fact, and seriously moralizing on it about that time. " The contiguity of situation," he says, "and facility of intercourse between Brooklyn and New York have induced thousands, whose entire business concerns lie in the latter, to make their domicile in the former city. This arrangement, though conducive to personal con- venience does not in ordinary cases exert the happiest influence on the public weal. It is extremely difficult for any man to take all that interest in the good government of a place, where he considers himself a mere lodger, that would be felt, if he realized that all his interests, both personal and pecuniary, were identified with the community in which his political rights and responsibilities are involved." In this reflex influence of New York's increasing greatness and activity upon the city at her side, the ferries were, of course, the one potent instru- ment of making it felt and ganging its extent. Some one took the trouble in 1834, when statistics did not as yet engage many official minds, nor newspaper almanaes were as encyclopedie as they are now -to stand on two days, one in September, the other in October, and count the carriages, wagons, and foot passengers that crossed at Ful- ton Ferry. The foot passengers on the day in September numbered 7, 988, and on the October day, 8,251. In 1845 it was estimated that from twelve to fifteen thousand people crossed daily. The fare in 1844 was voluntarily reduced to two cents per foot passenger. As the city grew
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other ferries were gradually established. Sonth Ferry, running its boats from the foot of Whitehall Street in New York to Atlantic Street (or Avenue), Brooklyn, began its operations in 1836. In 1839 a nnion was effected between those controlling the Fulton Ferry and the owners or lessees of South Ferry. It was bitterly opposed at first, a publie meeting of the citizens even being called to protest against it. But the union was effected, with obviously beneficial re- sults to the city. The combined ferries at first went by the name of the " New York and Brooklyn Ferry Company." By a rearrange- ment of stockholders, the title of the company was changed in 1844 to that more familiar one, " The Brooklyn Union Ferry Company." As the city kept increasing in population to ward the southern sections of the old township, absorbing more and more of Gowanus, and making less and less of a "neighborhood " of it, it was necessary to provide ferriage facilities in this direction. Hence, in 1846, Hamilton Fer- ry was begun, starting by the side of " South," at the south- ern extremity of Manhatan Island, and going in an oblique line straight to a point oppo- site Governor's Island, landing its passengers at the Atlantic Basin, of which we shall speak later. It was likewise under the control of the Union Com- HENRY C. MURPHY. pany. Like South Ferry, it did not pay expenses at first; perhaps the ventures were premature, yet they were of a nature to create the conditions that would make them profitable eventually. Another venture, equally unprofitable at first, approached again the older ferry location-the ferry from Wall Street. New York, to Montague Street, in Brooklyn. It was leased in Decem- ber, 1853, and ere long also came under the management of the Union Company, whose great profits at Fulton Ferry enabled them to carry the losing enterprises until they could improve. It may well be imag- ined that now was the time that the somewhat unnatural grants to New York City of lands between high and low water, on the opposite side of the river, by the charters of 1708 and 1732, were felt to be par- tienlarly galling by the people of Brooklyn. The matter was con- tested in the courts, and constantly brought up before the Legislature
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of the State. In May, 1845, an act was proposed, depriving the Corpo- ration of New York of the power of granting ferry franchises between New York and Long Island. This was to be vested in an independent Board of Commissioners, to be appointed by the Governor, none of these men to be residents of either of the counties of Kings, Queens, Suffolk, New York, or Richmond. A lease was granted by this commission, which was contested as an amicable suit, in order to try the legality of the commission's powers. It is a pity that these con- flicting claims and rights, vested in New York, when there was no incorporated community of any extent or influence on Long Island, should have so long imbittered the relations of two sister cities so closely bound together. We can hardly believe now to what extent this hostility would go. In 1843 the Common Council of New York, consisting then of aldermen and assistant aldermen from each ward, actually had a bill before them, proposing to tax the personal prop- erty of citizens of Brooklyn who came over every day to do business in New York. The Common Council of Brooklyn at once drew up a memorial to the Legislature, indignantly protesting against this un- friendly and unjust act. It would be hard to say whether the spite- fulness or the suicidal folly of it were its greater blemish.
Among the earliest municipal amenities was a provision to secure a park. The beginning of a movement so laudable was not a happy one, however. It was proposed to locate the first city park in the vi- cinity of the Wallabout. There was not much left to be laid out artis- tically, with the water front converted into a navy yard. There re- mained, however, the old mill pond of Aris Remsen's, the man with the runaway slaves. The bottom of that was still to be seen, and here was a chance for a park, which was the origin of that uninteresting inclosure we pass as hastily as we can in trolley cars, and which, for a few years, we used to double in elevated trains. The City Jail, a necessity of a sadder nature for the new city, was erected in Raymond Street, nestling close up against the attractive precincts of Fort Greene Park as it now is. The cornerstone was laid in August, 1836.
Only a few mayors were elected under the old system-that is, by the Aldermen. Mr. Jonathan Trotter succeeded George Hall in 1835, the incumbent holding office only one year. Mr. Trotter was re-elected in 1836. But in 1840 the election of a Mayor was thrown open to the vote of all the citizens, and Mr. Cyrus P. Smith was the first one thus chosen, having been made Mayor under the old system the year before. As in New York, so in Brooklyn, the firemen were a volun- teer body. Various hose companies were established in different parts of the town, some of them having nothing but sheds for the housing of their machines. In 1855 the firemen were organized as the Fire Department of the City of Brooklyn, two members from each hose company constituting a board of management. In 1835, New York had had its great fire, and in 1845 another one, which would
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have been great enough if the former had not been so imposing. In 1848, Brooklyn followed with a memorable fire of its own. Just where Fulton Street makes a curve on the top of the hill. opposite Sands Street, there stood a frame building used as an upholstery and furniture store. In its immediate vicinity was a cluster of such buildings adjoining one another. There had been a dry season all summer, and for weeks preceding September 9 scarcely a drop of rain had fallen. Thus conditions were exceedingly favorable for a blaze. On that day it came, and spread with great swiftness over the entire block, reaching back to Henry Street. The wind blew with some force, and the fierce heat increased the draught of it, so that the flames were readily carried across Middagh Street, on the one side, and across Fulton on the other. Several blocks were now involved in destruction. The fire consumed all the houses on Sands Street to Washington, except a few beyond the Methodist Church. That edi- fice, and the Baptist Church in Nassau Street, as well as the Univer- salist Church in Fulton Street, became a prey to the flames. The fire- men were helpless, from the scarcity of water, yet they worked heroic- ally in aiding the people to carry their goods to a place of safety. On Fulton Street three entire blocks between it and Henry, as far as Orange Street on the west, and the blocks on the east between it and Washington, as far as Concord Street, were destroyed. There were a few brick buildings that were partially saved, but the frame houses all succumbed. The only way to stop the progress of the fire was to blow up the houses in its path with gunpowder, as was done in New York. The fire began about 11.30 at night, and the heavens were lit np by the great area of flame all night long. Twenty engines came over from New York, but withont water they were of no use. The total loss was put at one million and a half dollars. Not content with following New York's example with one fire, Brooklyn had also its second fire. This raged among the storehouses on Furman Street, and was marked by an explosion of saltpeter, which was supposed to have caused New York's fire of 1845, the force being great enough to hurl one fire engine clear into the water. No lives were lost, how- ever, and the loss was estimated at $400,000. This second fire oc- curred in July, 1850. These fires stimulated the enterprise and made justifiable the large outlays necessarily involved in procuring a sys- tem of waterworks. In village days propositions to provide these had been made. One was to establish a reservoir on Clover Hill (Colum- bia Heights), drawing water from springs on the East River shore, which it was thought would cost about $25,000. Another scheme, to involve an outlay of $100,000, was broached just at the incorporation as a city. The plan was to get water from the springs supplying the streams running into the Wallabout, and eleven miles of pipe were to distribute the water. In 1852 the problem of an engineer, appointed the year before, was busily discussed. Another step in this rather too
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deliberate movement was taken in 1853, when the Common Council went to the expense of $44,000 to secure several streams and ponds on Long Island, in pursuance of the plans submitted by this engi- neer. In June an act was passed at Albany authorizing the Council to go on with the water supply, after a vote of the people upon the plan proposed, with its estimated cost, which resulted in a defeat of the measure by nearly four thousand majority. This left the mat- ter in abevance until another plan could be submitted to the people. It seems incredible, not only that the people should have defeated such a measure by an adverse vote, but that there should have been so little interest in the matter that out of 17,000 voters, but 7,693 per- sons voted at all. The plan just rejected contemplated a distributing reservoir on Prospect Hill, where now stands the lofty tower familiar to Brooklynites, and visible for forty miles around. The cost was to be four millions of dollars. Again, on June 1, 1854, a plan was submitted to vote, embracing a reservoir at Cypress Hills, and a cost of half a million more. Of the 9,015 votes cast, 6,402 were against it. So no scheme was carried into effect until after the consolidation of Brooklyn and Williamsburgh. Another improvement worth noticing was the introduction of gas, in March, 1848, twenty-three years after New York had adopted this scientific illuminant. Four years later the city was congratulating itself on having twenty-two miles of street mains, and over twelve hundred gas-lamps. The population had then reached one hundred and twenty thousand souls, and Brooklyn ranked as the seventh city in the United States. Those who love to catch faint echoes of great things to come will be pleased to learn that about this time the population of the two cities did not hesitate to consider again the possibility of a bridge, which historian Prime, in 1845, had declared would be as useless as " a fifth wheel." A Trib- une issue in 1849 declared: "The bridge is the great event of the day. New York and Brooklyn must be united, and there is no other means of doing it. The thing will be accomplished one of these days. and the sooner the better." Mindful of the many floating bridges spanning the swift current of the Rhine, some proposed one for the channel of the East River, whose rapid current with the flowing or ebbing tides could easily perform the service that the Rhine does in opening draws for the passage of vessels. Before leaving the subject of municipal affairs, we are compelled to record a riot with which the authorities were called upon to deal. Why the disturbance arose is not very clear. In May and June, 1854, persons of the primitive Methodist persuasion held open-air preaching services in the Brooklyn streets. On May 29, such a meeting was held on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street. We are told it was " disturbed by the presence of some 300 New York Know Nothings." But why should they disturb such a meeting? It is more likely that it was their pres- ence and sympathy with the meeting and movement that provoked
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disturbance. The Know Nothings were violently anti-Catholic, and, on their way home across Catharine Street Ferry they had to pass through an Irish and Catholic neighborhood. They antagonized such an element of the population doubly, for the Know Nothings were bitterly opposed to foreign immigrants. This may account for the attack mpon that body on their return from another open-air service on June 4, when a lively fight eusued in the neighborhood of the Catharine Ferry, at Main and Front streets. The New Yorkers were assailed with chibs and stones, and they replied with pistols. The Brooklyn police had tried to disperse the attacking mob before the trouble began, and they did noble work in restraining and arresting the rioters. The militia were called in, and quiet was restored. The next Sunday, the Mayor was fully prepared with police and military to quell any disturbance that might arise. The street-preaching was not forbidden, for the principle of free speech was in peril and must be vindicated. But the display of force, and, possibly better than that, the injunctions of Bishop Loughlin to his parishioners, pre- vented any further rioting, and showed that Brooklyn's rulers could cope with violence as well as those of New York.
The incorporation as a city, and its government as a stable and prosperous municipality, made themselves felt in the external condi- tions and appearance. The increased value of real estate was a con- sequence and a test of the changed circumstances. In 1835 a farmi of eight acres within the city limits was sold for $10,000 per acre; while the Samuel Jackson estate, reaching from Henry Street to the viver, and lying between Clarke and Montagne streets, was sold for the then extraordinary figure of $570,000. As far out as Cripplebush, Garret Nostrand's farm, whose name is perpetuated in an avenue running through the property, was sold for $80,000. Improvements were now in order in the way of widening the thoroughfares of the growing city. On the east side of Fulton Street the line was carried inside of that npon which the houses had been standing, and those transgressing it from Front to the river were taken down. The wa- terline too was carried beyond the marshes or mudflats, so that Water Street was laid out, and warehouses and factories were erected beyond the former line of beach at the rear of the houses on Front Street. At the same time the shore was carried beyond the old road under the heights, and Furman Street, with its wharves and yards far ont from the bluff, began to assume its present businesslike appearance. In 1840 the old Gowanns Road, which began at Fifth and Flatbush ave- nnes, and ran obliquely between the lines of Fifth and Third avemes, occassionally pursuing that of either, was converted into the two thoroughfares now known by these numerals, which threw open Go- wanns, now the Eighth Ward, to residence and occupation. On the other side of the city development was invited by the opening and laying out of Myrtle Avenue. That busy street proves how valuable
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